Corruption
by Ghost501
Summary: What happens when you lose someone so dear that the very fabric of your mind shatters into pieces? How do you fit together the parts of a puzzle that continually break into more parts when you pick them up? The answer: ...


The moment I realize this is my 40th story on FFN. Disconnect will mark my 30th story submitted for MMBN. Wow, and my first year isn't even over yet. It's been exciting and I'm hoping for much more to come! I've really loved talking to everyone in this community, you guys are like S-Ranking BassBX awesome. Hope to continue writing stuff you all like, BETAing your ideas, and hey I got quite a few ideas from just talking to people so if you really want me to write something, PM and I may do. So with that, get your tissues. This may get ugly...

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_Net Navis are artificial intelligence programs that operate the PET device; they also can simulate an actual human being. Despite being noted for their ability to bust viruses, it is important to note that all Net Navis have feelings. However, they are unable to fully understand them due to these emotions being artificial. As a result, they cannot deal with high stress. Due to this, cases of extreme emotional distress, such as anger, will cause a navi to shut down for six hours in order to restore their systems to an appropriate level. When the navi awakens, it is important for the NetOp to talk to his or her navi to make sure that the navi does not relapse. If one does, it is impossible to know what kind of actions that navi will take due to its confusion._

_-Page 105 of the Net Navi Manual_

_-Written by Dr. Hikari and Dr. Cossack_

* * *

Very few navis or programs were roaming around the SciLab area early in the morning. Most of the green programs were asleep while the navis were performing some kind of menial tasks. It was safe to say that the whole area, for intensive purposes, was dead. So, it was no surprised that when a female navi began to walk around looking like a half dead zombie, no one asked if she was okay.

Haha. Being okay. That was a riot. The female navi couldn't remember the last time she had even smiled, despite it being no more than five days ago. The last time she had walked around was two days ago. It was safe to say that she was no longer the active navi she used to be. Most of her friends looked at her with sympathy. Even her NetOp had put her in a copybot to try and console her. As if it helped. She wanted to appreciate what everyone was trying to do for her. She really did. But, it was pointless because no one could fill the whole that he had left in her heart. She only wanted him back.

Her thoughts began to strangle her as she continued her lifeless walk. Had he been in pain when he died? Did he even know? No, he couldn't have…but what if he did? What if he blamed her for his death just like she blamed herself? It had to have been her fault. He had died because of her incompetence. Her inability. It was her fault. It was all her damn fault! The navi shut her eyes as she remembered cursing herself fours hours after he was pronounced dead. She remembered feeling the ever so forgiving numbing feeling wash over her as the news tried to pound its way into her head over and over again. She thought he had been safe, but he wasn't. And the only conclusion that she could come to was that his death was all her fault. Everything he could have contributed to the world had been erased in that one moment all because of her.

As she continued to trudge her feet on the ground, she checked her internal clock for the time. It was around 10: 25 at night. Maybe she should go back. They had been worried about her staying out to late. However, she hadn't known that in reality it was actually 1: 30 in the morning. Her internal clock had been slowed due to the amount of new data her body had been trying to process. The emotions program was working overtime trying to kick in its suppressed shut down sequence. There was no reason why she shouldn't be knocked out right now. She had reached her limit even when she had woken up! Then again, none of that had even mattered to her anymore.

She squeezed her eyes shut as her obsession began to claw at her once again. Screw every last scientist who dared to shove down that your-emotions-are-simulated crap that they sold so well. If they were so fake, then why were they so real? Why did her anger push her to disobey her logic programming? Why did she act so human if she was meant to be a computer program? She gripped her helmet hard as the mantra repeated over and over and over again. So close. So close. So damn close! Her mind was bogged by just the numbing factor alone. And that fact alone had pushed her to her brink over and over again. She hadn't even felt the pain for her wound early.

She barely noticed that more and more of her data was floating off into space. Then again, she had barely felt it when she had stabbed her symbol with a broken arrow. Despite giving herself one of the most deadly and painful wounds known to navi, she had remained silent as a mouse, barely making a noise. When she had realized what she had done, she just…became lost. The cut hadn't seemed so bad and there hadn't been any data flowing until she had been walking around for about five minutes. But by that point, something else other than her systems screaming at her that her System Core had been damaged had consumed her mind.

As she got to the end of SciLab Area 2, she just looked out at the sky. She had remembered at some point the she had thought the design of it kinda cool. Now, all she could see was gray and black. Or maybe that was her vision program beginning to fail. Who knew anymore. As she continued her path, her color was beginning to fade from her as more and more programs inside of her began to fail. Logic, vision, hearing, movement. She hadn't made a huge wound, but it had struck enough data to start confusing and crashing the codes that powered her. Her eyes began to turn a sickly red while her body began to turn blue.

Then, her logic program crashed. She paused for a moment before her depressed eyes gained a look of crazed wonderment. Finally, something inside of her snapped. She didn't want to walk anymore. No, she just wanted it gone. All of it! It didn't matter anymore. He was gone! She had failed him!

As she began to walk close to a cyber road, her thoughts turned to him. She was breaking down, but her memories of him would be the last thing to go. She wondered if his programming had allowed him to listen to her. Had he heard him too? However, such thoughts were wasted on the crazed navi as she realized one thing once again: HE WAS DEAD! He who was alive had been sleeping next to her trying to help her as she slowly began to go insane. Him dead. It made no sense. He was supposed to be alive. Next to her and him! Together! It was supposed to be the three of them so why was there only two? Why was there only two! She smiled creepily as she walked closer to the edge of the cyber road. Deletion couldn't be that bad right? After all, she had already damaged her core enough to ensure that she would receive a slow death anyway.

A Mr. Program looked up with sleepy eyes as he noticed her walking with her creepy smile and the beginnings of a psychotic laugh echoing. The program went back to sleep. No more bug frags before bed. They gave it nightmares.

She was only about a few feet away from the ledge now. She could see the deep darkness that she wanted to reach. Maybe she would finally be able to know how far the abyss went. Too bad she wouldn't be able to tell anyone though.

She didn't even take a breath.

_Four steps_. She no longer cared.

_Three_. Why keep around such a failure as herself?

_Two._ Her own son died because of her!

_One…_

* * *

Roll was jerked back before she could make her last step over the edge. The damaged navi was quickly pulled into Megaman's arms. The blue bomber was breathing hard as her laughs of madness began to quiet down. She had been caught. She had almost jumped. And from the looks of things, she had done a number on herself beforehand. The poor once pink navi was now more of a hypothermic blue. Her dead red eyes looked into his chest numbly as if she didn't process why she wasn't seeing nothing but darkness. Her laughs finally died down and now sounded more like sobs.

Then seconds later, she thrashed against him trying to complete the last objective like it was the last thing she would do before she died. Megaman grabbed her tightly, trying to endure the navi's poor attempts of trying to get herself over the bridge. He was scared. He had never seen her this mad. She knew that she had been "depressed" after he had died, but this was the first time she had completely lost her sanity. It soon got to the point where Megaman had to wrestle her to the ground and hold her there. Seconds changed to minutes as he kept her from completing her last goal. Finally, after a time, she stopped writhing around she stared back at him with her red eyes. More sobs that tore at his very soul existed from her mouth. The blue navi put a hand on her cheek, rubbing it gently.

Finally, by some miracle, the emotions program was finally able to get around the its own measures that prevented it from shutting Roll down. The navi's cries of sorrow finally died as her eyes fluttered for a moment and then closed. The navi sighed sadly as he picked her up and began to hurry her back to SciLab. Her core data hadn't been hurt, but she was going to need someone's help. Now.

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It had taken him a while to find a scientist who was working overtime—there was always one—but he had at last returned Roll to her little comp space in SciLab. She couldn't live in her PET anymore. She had been prone towards little "accidents" for the past three days. So far, this one had been the worse of the outbreaks. He watched her carefully as the blue finally began to regress and change back into the pink he had loved. Her eyes fluttered for a moment before they too returned back into their wonderful green. However, the expression they had didn't change.

She blinked a couple of time before looking back at Megaman. She caught his worried glance and turned away. She couldn't even do _that_ right. She started sniffling for a while before Megaman knelt next to the sitting navi and held her. Once again, as she had done for days on end, she let out another wail and a fresh set of tears. Why did this hurt so much?

"Why didn't you let me? It's my fault he's dead. Your first…" she cried through her tears.

Megaman shook his head, "It wasn't your fault. Nobody could have known."

"It doesn't matter. He's…he's supposed to be here. I failed him. It's my fault our code didn't work," she mumbled somewhat hysteric again.

"It's okay, Roll," he said to her as she shook her head.

The mantra began to play again in her head, "It's my fault."

"No, it's not," he said, actually pleading with her. He hadn't known where she had gotten the notion from, but apparently anything could be a rational for her when she lost Stream. Stream . EXE was their first son. However, the small boy navi had gotten a corrupted file somewhere in his development cycle. No one was quite sure how it happened although Dr. Cossack said he would look at it as a favor for Dr. Hikari who couldn't analyze the code of his grandson. With a corrupted file deep within his System Core already in him, the little navi baby hadn't been able to survive longer than a week.

Despite giving the navis the ability to have children, when their creators realized that the programs had real interest in procreation due to the seamless convenience of back up chips and how they were created and the not understandable emotions that can alone with it, no further research had been done on the navis' psychological status and if there wasn't a small chance some like this could occur.

Apparently, there was.

Since learning their son was dead due to a file corruption, Roll had gone off the deep end. Hub had tried to help her understand that it wasn't her fault, but she couldn't get past the fact that her son was sentence to die while still developing in _her_ body. That thought alone seemed to trigger her to start hating herself. According to Dr. Hikari, several areas in her logic programming were going crazy. She wasn't bugged, but extremely confused and her emotions programming wasn't helping any. It seemed like Roll's emotional code was driving her into an extreme state of depression.

The only problem was that sometimes, the program wouldn't shut her down. She would be well past her emotional limit and yet she was still functioning. The program was fueling itself with Roll's "need" for a depressed feeling but yet over stressed by it. It wasn't surprising when the program got stuck in an endless loop.

With Roll's current mental condition at an all time low, the scientists decided that trying to change her code now would only hurt her more since it would only delay her breakdowns. Apparently, when Roll was pregnant with Stream, her mindset was changed ever so slightly. She was still the same navi, but now she was a mom too. And when a mother losses a child, the results can be catatonic. In Roll's case, she had cracked open like a walnut and the others, including Megaman, Lan, and Mayl, were trying to collect all the pieces before the wind blew them away.

Megaman gently held the navi that had captured his heart as her own was breaking. He too was heartbroken over the loss of his son. But the loss of both Roll and Stream would be too much. So for now, he would just have to be strong enough to keep her together until the day she was able to stand. No matter how long that would be. Despite only having him for a few days, Hub missed his son terribly. He looked down at the small girl navi who was still crying into his chest. They both did.

It wasn't going to be easy, but one day the two would be able to get back to "normal". Whatever the hell normal was anymore. Their first would always hold a special place. He would never be forgotten. But no one was asking them to forget. They were just asking to heal. And at the end of the day…that was all they could do. No matter how slow it was.

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Ghost: I know I said _I'm Sorry Remastered _was one of my hardest tragedies, but this one was definitely harder. If you can't tell, Roll's one of my favorite characters but it's even more than the fact that she's heartbroken enough to try and kill herself. It's mostly that Stream dies at such a young age in this story. I think that's the worst part of writing this for me this story because that's in no way enjoyable. But then again, life is not always enjoyable. Anypanel, that's it for me. Ghost501, logging out.


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